


Peace When You Are Done

by captainangua



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Canonical Character Death, Episode AU: s06e11 Appointment in Samarra, F/M, Gen, Grieving, Heaven, Past Lisa Braeden/Dean Winchester, Protective Dean Winchester, Queer Sam Winchester, Season/Series 06, Smart Sam Winchester, Soulless Sam Winchester, Souls
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-12
Updated: 2017-03-12
Packaged: 2018-10-03 17:23:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10252892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainangua/pseuds/captainangua
Summary: Soul or not, Sam was not ok, and that burning, glowing ball looked like it was about to rip his body apart.*Death is ready to put Sam's soul back, but Dean might not be. And though sending Sam's soul to Heaven instead of back in his body leaves Dean with a still soulless brother, it may end up winning Cas his war.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So this mini bang really became more technically a big bang...
> 
> This started from a what-if idea when I was originally watching season 6, and then grew with the help of later episodes like hey, that time Bobby started an actual Heavenly rebellion - what ended up going down there? Will we ever know?
> 
> Amazing art partner in this is the lovely lux-tuli, who you can check out on tumblr or writing on AO3. I also had a wonderful beta for this piece which means it makes considerably more sense, especially gramatically, than anything I write usually does.

  


Dean took his eyes off the back wall for a moment and suddenly he was frozen, staring at the glowing ball above Death’s hand. That silvery ethereal glowing shit that was… well, his brother.

Technically, this was the first time he was looking at him since Sam had made himself fall into that pit.

“You’re sure you want to do this, Dean?”

Dean swallowed, but kept staring at the ball of the light. Had he still looked that bright after all that time in Hell? Would Sam’s time there have felt longer, shorter, worse, better?

He hadn’t let himself think of it much lately, but now he wondered again. The Pit was isolated, that’s how everyone described it. So Sam probably didn’t have any souls to be made to torture in there with him. Well, no one except Adam.

But Dean was doing his level best not to think about Adam.

“I mean -” he started, his voice catching in his throat. He’d been about to snap out something along the lines of _obviously_ he wanted to get this done, this was why they were here, why he’d gone to all this trouble, why Bobby had gone through having his life threatened… But now he was looking down at Sam’s eyes, wide and scared – that fear was real, and it didn’t have anything to do with a soul.

He might never recover, that’s what they were all trying to tell him. Sam was right to be so afraid.

And there was something about seeing his brother, whatever else he might not be, look so honestly freaked out that was making Dean pause, making the ‘yes’ the Grim Reaper himself needed to hear freeze on his tongue. He remembered when he hadn’t just wanted to make sure Sam didn’t die but when he’d actually wanted to keep him safe in other ways. Their Dad hadn’t made the decision to keep the family business from Sam when he was young, he’d just gone along with what Dean had already started doing.

Protecting Sammy, making sure he was ok.

Soul or not, Sam was not ok, and that burning, glowing ball looked like it was about to rip his body apart.

“Dean?”

They were still trying to talk to him. Or, Death was – _someone_ was, trying to get his attention, get him to decide what he’d been so sure of. To get his brother back, whatever the price. And there Sam was – the _real_ Sam – glowing in front of him, _so damn close_.

Dean _was_ going to get his brother back. Even if it put Sam through… new levels of pain he might never recover from?

Pain only made Winchesters stronger, that’s what their Dad would have said.

But their Dad wasn’t there.

It was just Dean left calling the shots.

And Sam’s soulless but still fully functioning body, which had nearly killed Bobby just to stop them from saving him.

Right.

“Dean, I can’t hold this here indefinitely -”

“Dean!” sensing weakness, the soulless creature leaned forward, a manic new energy in his eye. “Please don’t do this. He won’t thank you for this, Dean, Dean please don’t -”

Dean wanted to snarl, wanted to shove the glowing floating silver ball into his own mouth just to stop Death from talking, but he also felt trapped again, by the fact that although Sam had just referred to his self with a soul as someone completely different he also… sounded just like Dean’s little brother. The way he did sometimes in nightmares, when he begged Dean to do something different, to save him before he had to drag himself back down to Hell again.

Dean fucking hated those dreams.

“ _Dean -”_

“I don’t know, alright!”

Dean knew the room had gone silent as he turned to face the opposite wall, but he felt as though the buzzing in his head had only gotten louder. God he wanted something to drown this out, he did not want to be here, he did not want this decision to be all on him. Again. Because that always worked out _great._

“Dean, there is another option.” It was the same voice again. More weary and irate, and though not entirely unsympathetic, it was still Death pressing him for an answer on what to do with his brother’s life.

“Alright, hit me.”

There was a long sigh. Dean kept his head in one hand and didn’t look round.

“I have removed your brother’s soul from its wrongful positioning in the lowest pit of Hell. There is nothing stopping me now returning it to where it should have been all along.”

“What are you saying?”

“I can bring him into his place in Heaven, Dean.”

Dean breathed out slowly picturing Sam, eating Thanksgiving dinners with strangers and hanging out in the Roadhouse all eternity long, all fuzzy forgetfulness and happy memories, leaving Dean… But Sam had always wanted that out, that way to be normal, hadn’t he? That’s why he’d tried so hard to make Dean go and get it.

What was more normal apple pie than being sorted into your happy place upstairs? No lingering unfinished business, no painful resurrection, no Hell torture at the Devil’s own hands. Just fluffy clouds and whatever the Hell Sam had ever enjoyed most about life. They probably had a salad up there with his name on it.

“Sure.” Dean’s voice felt rusty, like he’d been drinking for two days without saying a word to anyone.

“Dean…”

Bobby’s voice this time. Dean didn’t have the energy to figure out if it was approving or not. He wasn’t sure if he approved or not. He didn’t trust the angels to look after the soul of a frog let alone his little brother brother.

And he still had no idea what he was supposed to do with the soulless shell tied down on the bed.

And maybe he still had a lot he wanted to say to Sam, things he hadn’t been able to open his mouth for when he’d lain there in the graveyard beaten on the ground and watched his brother pull two archangels down with him into something he’d never thought he’d get back from.

Something Dean had just managed to _get_ him back from now, _finally_.

Sure, maybe nobody had the literal Hell experiences he and Sam had, but no one played Death for a day either, did they?

“Hey, wait -” Dean managed to force out as he turned around and looked at the figures around the bed, only to see with rapidly flooding eyes that one had left.

“He’s gone, Dean,” Bobby said, before taking a step back from where Sam was still tied down. No, not Sam. Because Death had flown off with his soul and Dean had lost his only chance at getting the real Sam back. Because Heaven, Hell – none of it mattered, not for him _._ Because his brother was still gone and Dean was never going to see him again.

He made the mistake of meeting the creature’s eyes for a second, and that was enough. Dean couldn’t deal with any of it anymore – not Bobby calling his name, not the husk left of his brother, not Dean’s own decision to leave him like that like that – a murderous, cold soulless monster who might as well walk around wearing a white suit for all the good it would do – if Sam could only see himself now… Dean didn’t know if he still knew how to breathe, let alone if he even wanted to anymore.

He only registered he was outside leaning on his car when he felt the light touch of a hand on his back. Dean whirled round to face his attacker, knife clenched in his shaking hand, and he couldn’t bring himself to immediately drop it when he saw it was Cas. Cas, standing there with the same unreadable face he’d always had. Dean had thought he’d gotten better at understanding the angel’s fleeting shows of emotion, but maybe Dean was just too tired to seek it out today.

God he was tired.

“You made the right choice, Dean,” Cas said as Dean slowly started to lower his knife.

“And how would you know?”

Cas inclined his head slightly for a beat before putting a gentle hand down on the hood of the car, almost asking for Dean’s permission.

“Heaven may not be perfect, but there isn’t a better place for souls,” he said carefully. “You have made sure your brother has a chance of happiness, of peace – and not simply pain.”

“Yeah, well maybe I didn’t want him to have those things,” Dean grunted. Fuck, what was he saying?

“I don’t know what I’m saying,” Dean said slowly, leaning back on the car and looking out at the skyline. “And I don’t know what I’m supposed to do with Mr Psycho and Soulless in there either.”

Dean didn’t look round, but he could feel the angel staring at him as Cas rarely had to anymore – like he was trying to make sense of how Dean worked, how people worked.

“I don’t have a soul,” Cas said eventually, almost casually.

“Yeah but you’re… not psycho.”

Cas shrugged. “Is Sam?”

Dean stared. “You heard what happened to Bobby, right?”

“And you knew Sam had no soul.”

“He was -”

“He was reduced to a primitive state I’m not sure any human alive has ever gone through, and he felt his existence was threatened.”

Dean’s fingers curled around the comforting metal edge of his car.

“You don’t seem… primitive.”

Dean turned to watch the angel’s expression this time, and saw Cas start one of his almost half smiles, but there was something very sad, and very tired about his eyes. Dean wasn’t sure how to read what he saw there.

“No.” Cas stood up a little straighter, and his small smile almost seemed to spasm. “But if I’m expecting to teach angels to change… and Sam once forced the Devil himself to submit to his will…”

“When he had a soul,” Dean reminded him, slowly.

“But he at least remembers having one,” Cas said, definitely not smiling anymore. “I don’t.”

The angel looked Dean right in the eye. “Do you think I’ve changed in the time you’ve known me?”

Dean blinked, tempted to remind Cas who and what this conversation was supposed to be about. “Uh. Well sure. I saw you get drunk once. Original Make and Model you never would have tried that. You fell from Heaven for -” for me, Dean had been about to say, but he didn’t deserve anyone doing anything for him, not today – “… to do the right thing.”

Cas nodded slowly. “And isn’t that what a soul is, the material to allow for personal change, to be informed by emotion?”

“Is it?”

Cas shook his head. “I’m not sure. I only know that there is nothing in the universe so powerful, and not an angel in the host has one of their own.”

Dean opened his hands out wide. “So…?”

“So I think you should attempt to bring things back to how they were. He does at least seem to have an inbuilt kind of loyalty to you. In time he might learn to be… a someone.”

“Since when did you join the Sambot fan club?”

It felt wrong to make any kind of jokes when Sammy was dead, dead again, dead because Dean couldn’t save him, again, but that didn’t seem to be stopping Dean’s mouth.

Cas swung his head back to look at Dean. “Since that’s all you left yourself with. And you’re grieving, and neither you or Bobby deal with that constructively and I – I can’t be here.”

There was something soft about the way the angel ended that sentence but Dean was too angry to linger on it. What, so he at least had a Sam substitute to babysit this time, he should just sit back and be grateful?

“Great. Well, you got more important places to be, you go get to ‘em, cowboy.”

“Dean -”

“ _I said,_ go fucking get-”

The sound of Cas leaving him came before Dean finished speaking.

Dean let himself slump a little, leaning more of his weight down on the car. As he pressed his fingers harder into the metal he wondered if the car was something Sam would see up in his happy place, or if Dean and the car were just part of a lifetime of bad memories he wouldn’t have to think of anymore.

*

Sam almost wasn’t sure how to recognise the feeling he had thrumming through him as he woke up slowly that morning, the sun almost blinding him as it shone through the tiny crack in their curtains. He’d actually slept enough, for once, he could tell that much, and his fingers were still buried in Jess’s tangle of bed hair, fanning out over their pillows like a golden river.

Sam stared at their ceiling and couldn’t understand why it made him uneasy, and moved his thumb and finger to feel the hair between them, checking to make sure it was real.

He’d slept enough, he had a beautiful girl curled against the crook of his arm… He was _happy_.

And it was getting harder to remember why that felt strange.

“Jess?”

There was a low growl emitted from the figure next to him even as she kept her eyes tightly closed. But he felt the covers shift a little tighter towards her and watched that tiny, familiar little smile start to tug her lips up. “Few more minutes. Few more _hours_ – we don’t have any place to be this morning, c’mon.”

Sam snorted and shifted obligingly, covering her waist with his arm. Because she was right - they didn’t have anyplace to be, not today, for some reason. Their exams were done, and it was a day off from his job, and his second job. There wasn’t even any research to do for college or a hunt nearby he never could resist at least reading into. They had no place to be but here, together.

It felt like a long time since Sam had last been able to just lie there holding his girlfriend in his arms.

_“I was dead the moment we said hello.”_

Sam twitched violently, making Jess groan beside him.

He’d heard the words in Jess’s voice – he’d _remembered_ the words coming out of her mouth but… but that hadn’t been her, he was almost certain it hadn’t been her. But it was getting harder to focus on the memory… thinking about it felt _wrong,_ like he was thinking about something that had happened in a different life.

And it had felt eerie, almost like something he’d watched happen in his _old_ life. He tried not to think much on that these days – it was hard, thinking that with the life the two of them led Dean and his Dad could be dead already without either of them bothering to tell him.

Or _kneeling limp on the ground with a bloodied face, ready to take whatever beating he needed to, even if that meant the worst possible one of watching Sam…_

What? Watching Sam do what?

“What’s up with you? You look like you woke up in the wrong bed or something.”

Sam took a deep breath in as he felt Jess twist round to face him. “I’m fine, I’m ok it’s just -”

She was looking at him fully awake and concerned now, looking him with the same face that had tortured him into a gibbering wreck a thousand times –

Closing his eyes, Sam scrambled out of the warm bed. None of this was right, not the bed, not Jess’s hands on him, not her voice, not even the sound of his breathing…

“Lucifer,” Sam forced out. “This is another trick.”

He opened his eyes, bracing himself to watch Jess’s face shift back again, but instead looked out onto an open road, his small hands grasping a familiar steering wheel.

“Dude, you’re not playing SuperMario, loosen up a little. It’s an empty, straight road, remember?”

Sam remembered.

“Dean?” His voice sounded wavering, and small. Too high to be his own. And yet…

His older brother rolled his eyes and leaned over to ruffle a hand through Sam’s hair. A gesture Dean had picked up from their Dad, and despite himself Sam felt pride well up in his chest.

“You’re pretty good at this actually,” Dean allowed, smiling slightly. “It’s probably since I’m such a good teacher.”

Sam resisted the urge to shove his brother, fearing for the car. “You’re maybe _pretty_ good,” Sam said instead, looking back at the flat, endless road. “You sure Dad won’t mind about this?”

Dean shifted slightly in his seat. “Nah, ‘course not. He said he wanted you to be able to help out more. He’ll be real happy with us both.”

But he hadn’t been though, Sam remembered with sudden clarity. Dad had gotten mad – they could have busted up the car, could have gotten themselves killed – what had Dean been thinking?

Sam had lived this already.

_“Like Groundhog Day?”_

Sam leaned his whole body down and stomped on the brakes, ignoring as Dean shouted in his ear beside him. This wasn’t right, none of this was right…

He ignored Dean’s shouting as he got out of the car and started running in the opposite direction.

_“You were running towards me…”_

“No I’m _not_!” Sam screamed aloud at the sky, his short legs having to work hard to keep pace ahead of Dean.

In front of him there wasn’t anything but empty road … until there was, and a door seemed to open in the air as if the world was made of paper, and a hand was reaching out, beckoning him in.

Without thinking about it, Sam leapt through the door and heard it close behind him, an eerie, unreal sound.

He’d landed on wooden boards, the legs now sprawling under him far longer than they had been as that kid learning to drive. And he knew that smell – he knew this place too…

“Welcome back _again_ , Sammy.”

Sam blinked and tried to focus, to ground himself. Physically he felt fine, but mentally he felt like his mind had been twisted beyond repair. The last thing he could remember was running. No, _falling_ , falling and Dean’s broken face, but also _pai_ n, so much pain and so many fucking mindgames and who was to say this wasn’t one more?

“Dude, that was insane. You were in what, five minutes and you already bucked the system?”

Sam looked at the hand held out in front of his face, the same one that had welcomed him in here. Looking past it to a familiar face…

“ _Ash_?”

“Good seeing you back again, man,” Ash told him with a tight grin. “Well… sorta,” he added with a shrug. “Made some changes since you were here last, mostly to the new faces around here…”

Struggling to form words, Sam gaped. “Wait – _Heaven_? I’m in Heaven?”

Part of him wanted to kick himself for not seeing the obvious – like Ash said, he’d been here before, done all this already - but more of him rebelled at the idea He’d been trapped where he’d deserved to be, somewhere he was never getting out of. And the angels hated him, they wouldn’t go to any effort to make him part of the happy collection.

No, the more Sam thought about it, the more the idea of finding himself in Heaven seemed absurd.

Far more likely he was living through another trick.

Sam gripped a little harder on Ash’s arm, trying to calm himself, figure out his next move, his next question.

“Sam, you ok?”

Sam almost laughed. Concern – that felt more jarring than anything else. Lucifer had loved faking that for him.

Feeling panic rise in his throat, Sam turned his head wildly to take in the familiar scene of the Roadhouse, and the people he hadn’t seen in just as long. Whatever was going on they couldn’t be real – not Jo and Ellen sitting together on the bar stools, not Pamela, starting to smile as she inched her way a little closer to him, not… wait.

There was one he didn’t know, but recognized anyway. She was staring at him with a strange mix of terror and concern.

“…Mom?”

She bit down on her lip and continued staring at him, lip wobbling slightly, before eventually muttering out a, “Jesus fuck, he is tall.”

*

“So you’re sure about this,” Bobby stated again, no longer a question as he took another drink of his beer.

Dean looked down at the table and rubbed his hand over his forehead. “Nope.”

Bobby sighed and shook his head. “You’re second-guessing passing on the soul now ain’t you?”

“You bet.”

“Well… what it’s worth I think you probably made the right call.”

Dean looked Bobby in the eye only to glare him down.

“Having Karen come back to me was the strangest and happiest thing that’s happened to me in near on thirty years, Dean. Watching her turn into something else all over again though…” Bobby shrugged, face blank. “I’d have saved myself that. And the worry that now she might not get to go to any kind of ‘better place’.” He added the last part in a furtive mutter, as though he hoped Dean wouldn’t notice he’d spoken.

“It’s rough but at least you know where Sam’s ended up. Ain’t no surer hands than Death himself.”

“Heaven didn’t seem all that great,” Dean put in.

Bobby snorted. “Well sure. Best of a bad deal. You’re still dead.”

Dean flinched. It was bizarre trying to reconcile Sam being dead, really dead this time, when another Sam was still lying tied up in the panic room.

They didn’t say anything for a few minutes after that, just focused on finishing their beers, before Dean felt the silence getting to him.

“What d’you think a soul is, Bobby?”

Bobby scrunched his face up slightly in concentration. “Well, a lot of religions talk about individual life force. ‘Course some Biblical scholars like to theorize that no one had one ‘fore Christ went through with the whole finale on the cross. That the Holy Spirit, the part that saves a person for redemption, only entered the bodies of his apostles and everyone else _after_ that.

“You say the angels use it as a power source, and we know it’s something demons all want to get their grubby hands on, but then to some extent they’ve still got one for themselves. But the way some of them talk, I’m not sure they still _think_ they do…”

“Ok, but what do _you_ think it is?”

It had always been like this when Bobby had looked after them as kids, Dean remembered. One of them, usually Sammy, would ask a question Bobby wouldn’t be sure how to answer and they’d have to sit there listening as he tried to work it through in his head. Today Dean wasn’t sure he was in the mood for that.

Bobby scratched at the back of his head. “Gotta be honest, most of what I’m working with here is what you’ve found studying Sam. He’s still got all his memories, all his logic – all the pieces are there, but it just won’t make up a jigsaw. He doesn’t have any of the parts in him to care.”

“Cas cares,” Dean said, almost to himself. Maybe to convince himself.

“Well sure,” Bobby conceded with a shrug. “In his own Cas kind of way. So maybe Sam could… _grow_ feelings with enough exposure to them.”

“Hasn’t exactly worked out like that yet. Look what he tried to do to you -”

“We both know you already decided you were gonna untie him, Dean, so are you going to do that this week or do you need a few more philosophical discussions first?” Bobby asked flatly, talking over him.

Dean scowled. Then he bit down on his lip and stared at his beer bottle. “I don’t like it, Bobby. If he’s not Sam – not our Sam in any way that counts, then why am I keeping him alive? We don’t even really know what he is, what he’s capable of, if he might hurt someone again… But if it is Sam, even a little bit, then am I the one being the bad guy?” Dean choked on the end of his sentence, and angrily curled his lip up into a sneer as he heard his voice betraying him.

“Well… Like you say, we don’t know. One way you’re gonna find out it.”

“Talking to him.”

“Can’t go running to conclusions without more info.”

“Bobby, he tried to _kill_ you.”

Bobby shrugged. “Well we knew he wasn’t _perfect_.”

*

He’d ran through all the likely scenarios and figured that, most likely, Dean would choose to leave him alive. Dean could be brutal, merciless, and Sam knew he’d said he would rather choose to see his brother dead than a monster, but Dean frequently wasn’t as much a man of his word as he liked to think of himself.

And Sam looked too much like his baby brother, the exception to his every rule.

He wondered if, should he make it through these next few hours alive, he should think about going by a different name. It was more by habit than attachment that he hadn’t already - he was almost certain about that. It might help him distinguish his differences from the other Sam. The Sam that Dean wanted back, but apparently not enough to cause hurt to.

Since learning about the loss of his soul he’d spared some minimal thought to what a soul supposed to be and what it might mean to other people. He wondered a lot about what Dean would be like without a soul and Sam had a feeling he wouldn’t have adapted as well.

As though thinking of him summoned him, Sam watched his brother walk through the door, a wary scowl on his face, only moments later.

“Thank you,” Sam said immediately, trying to inject as much appropriate feeling into the words as possible.

But the words didn’t seem to get the effect he’d been hoping for, as Dean only gave him a strange look as he stood over him, folding his arms tightly across his chest.

“You know I didn’t do it for you.”

“Well…” Sam shrugged, as well as he was able to. “I mean, you did. I wasn’t going to just disappear. I just would have been one more strange episode for the other guy to feel guilty over.”

Dean looked at the ceiling like he was trying to forget there was anyone else in the room with him.

“So thank you.”

“Why say that?” Dean asked, apparently unable to stop himself. “You can’t even feel gratitude. We both know that.”

“But I remember it. And I know that you do, and I assumed you’d appreciate it.”

Dean snorted and looked away again. “That why you started hunting again?” He smiled slightly, but not with any warmth. “See that’s the part I can’t work out. Why go back to hunting when no one was there to make you? Why save people when you didn’t actually care if any of them lived or died?”

Sam considered this. It was important he get this question right if Dean was ever going to release him. But at the same time, he knew that Dean preferred his candor. Up to a point.

“Hunting’s what I know, and what I’m good at,” Sam started slowly. “And it’s something I’m still intellectually curious about. The only time I’ve ever tried something that wasn’t hunting was because I cared enough to pursue it, but now that isn’t exactly an option. And I guess… well, because you do it.”

“Uh-huh?”

“Yeah. Might not be the same reasons behind it, but it’s still my reflex to protect you, impress you. And I still trust you’ll want to look after me.”

Dean closed his eyes for a moment. “Wait, so watching me get turned by a bunch of vamps and not lifting a finger is protecting me?”

“I was curious! And, and I figured it would work out ok. And it did! Ok, maybe not with Lisa, but…” Sam added hurriedly as he watched Dean’s face rush through a variety of emotions, still conscious of being at his brother’s mercy.

He watched Dean take a deep breath, and turn to start pacing the room. “So if I let you out, you’d still want to hunt with me.”

Sam thought for a moment. “Yes. For the same reasons I’ve already said, and I’m still interested in seeing how things play out with Crowley.”

“And what if I don’t think I’m able to stand being around you any longer?”

“I’d probably hunt alone. But I don’t think you’d trust me to do that.”

“No,” Dean agreed. “Hell, you nearly killed Bobby, Sam. _Bobby_.”

“What do you want me to say? You were about to break my brain. And for what it’s worth, you probably made the right decision for _your_ Sam too. Even after the last trip he still didn’t really believe he could get to Heaven.”

“Well that’s dumb.”

“That’s what he thought.”

Dean gave him a long searching look. “You keep talking about him like he’s not you. Cas thinks you might be able to grow a new personality. What do you think?”

Sam tried shifting slightly in his bonds but it didn’t help much in lessening his discomfort. “I mean, would I even be able to tell if I did?”

Dean seemed to consider that for a moment, pushing his lower lip out moodily. “Alright. I’m gonna let you out. You’re gonna drop the American Psycho routine you tried to pull with Bobby.”

“That was -”

A silencing hand sliced through the air above Sam’s face. “And you should know I’m mostly only letting you out so he doesn’t have to worry about his would-be killer hanging out in his basement.”

Sam didn’t believe him, but he nodded.

“We’re gonna get a beer, and I’m gonna… figure something out,” Dean finished eventually as he reached down to start untying him.

“Ok.”

Dean squinted at him, still seeming like he was looking for something. Sam had a feeling he wasn’t about to find it. “And no trying any of that betrayal crap with me, either.”

Sam tried again for a shrug. “Why would I? I only went after Bobby like that because it made sense. And… I probably underestimated him, too,” Sam admitted. “I don’t think I’d make that mistake with you.”

Dean huffed out something like a laugh. “Yeah, not smart underestimating the old man. He never plays fair.”

Sam tried for a smile as he tried to rub feeling back into his wrists. Dean trusted him enough to let him sit up and talk to him. He wanted to get a beer, which was usually code for talking, and even if it wasn’t it was definitely a start.

*

Sam hadn’t grown up with many pictures of his Mom. Those they did have were rarely even for Sam’s eyes, but kept jealously by Dean and their Dad as private, sometimes crumpled, holy objects. The forbidden nature of them had always heightened the appeal of looking at them for Sam, whether he was stealing one out from under Dean’s pillow, or from its place as a bookmark in their Dad’s journal. He knew each one of those images by heart.

But this was the real thing. Not as a ghost, not in the past from before she was their mother. Real, and wearing real actual clothes, and staring at Sam like he’d just pulled out a grenade.

“Hi…” he registered her saying. It was the same sort of tone Dean had when he powered through talking in an awkward conversation.

If this was another trick, another illusion, another _game_ of Lucifer’s, Sam wasn’t going to break, but he was going to get angrier. Not that it would do any good, just like it hadn’t any of the other times before, but –

“Sam? You ok, buddy?” This was from Ash, but Sam couldn’t bring himself to look away from his Mom.

“I’m ok,” he said slowly, watching as Mary’s eyes started to water.

Two seconds in Heaven and he’d already made his dead mother cry. Amazing.

“Hey,” he tried, throat croaking slightly over the word.

Then she smiled, wiping furiously at her eyes as she kept on trying to look at him. “Hey. You’re dead. That’s really not good.”

“Trust me, it’s a major step up from where I’ve been.”

That made her laugh. He’d made his Mom laugh, Sam registered, even if it had sounded too much like a sob…

“Yeah, you’ve uh… Literally been through hell, right?” she said as he took a few tentative steps towards her.

“Yeah you could uh… you could say that.” He was almost standing so close to her now, she had to crane her neck up to keep looking at his face. Standing in front of her like that was bizarre, but a few moments later, he was wrapping his arms around her, feeling like it was the most natural thing in the world to do.

“Yeah, brought your Mom into the fold just a little bit after we found Bill,” Ellen said, smiling gruffly and leaning her head towards the man whose arm she was hanging off of. He was almost as tall as Sam, with a nose like Jo’s, and a wide smile which spread across the whole width of his face.

From the barstool that he’d leaned himself all over, Ash coughed loudly. “Think you mean when uh, _I_ found Bill…”

“I remembered Mary from when we were kids together,” Bill explained. Jo had shown him a photo of her father once, Sam remembered, but he couldn’t remember clearly enough if this man fit that image. “And with all this talk about you boys – well, I figured it was something she’d like to know about.”

As Mary relaxed her fingers’ grip on Sam’s shirt he realized how tightly she’d been holding him. “I like knowing what’s going on,” she said, almost bashfully. “And though it’s not nicer than playing happy dreamland families, it’s still better.”

“Which is why she wasn’t racing to find John,” Ellen muttered.

Mary smiled cynically for a moment, and for a moment Sam felt frozen all over again – she hadn’t smiled like that in the pictures.

“I haven’t exactly figured out what I’m gonna say to him yet.”

“You’re not exactly short on time up here,” Sam pointed out, plunging his hands deep into his pockets to avoid letting his hands keep trying to reach out and touch her, check she was real.

Somehow, he’d stopped questioning that this was actually Heaven. He felt like Lucifer wouldn’t have tried so hard to make his mother feel like a real person.

“Well, maybe not if the angels have their way,” Jo said, stepping forward to stand beside her parents. “Oh, and hey, by the way, thanks for saving the world and all that.”

There were are few noises of agreement at this, but Sam ignored that.

“What d’you mean, if the angels get their way?”

Ash flopped down onto the bar, which still looked as sticky as it had always been. “Still not that sure of what I’ve been hearing, but we _think_ that this guy Raphael -”

“The archangel.”

“- sure, well it sounds like he wasn’t happy about you stopping the party early. But now other angels wanna fight the man or whatever and don’t want to see him starting it back up again…”

Sam reminded himself to breathe.

“And if I’m here, if my body’s still in the cage… they wouldn’t even need another yes from me, Lucifer could just go on ahead…”

“Actually…” Ash raised his head slightly and seemed to be struggling for ways to construct his next sentence. “Ok so your body like… made it out of the cage, before like _you_ you did, you know? _”_

Sam’s eyes skirted cautiously over the faces staring up at him. “No?”

“Ok, so your angel friend -”

“Cas.”

“-right. He tried getting you out of that cage pretty much as soon as you put yourself down there.”

Sam’s eyes widened. “He did?” He’d always had the vague concern that Cas might not even like him that much, but apparently he’d literally risked the world just for a chance of getting Sam back – of saving him.

“Hey, was the least he could do, you were the one going through all the unending torments,” Jo pointed out.

“I guess...” It was strange, but talking, thinking, about all those ‘unending torments’ didn’t feel like it hurt as much as it should. If he tried, Sam could remember all of it, but something about the sheer power of being here seemed to soothe the trauma away so that he felt detached from it.

“Any case, he didn’t actually manage to get _all_ of you out of there,” Ash went on. “He kinda left your soul there getting tortured and took everything else with him back to Earth.”

Sam’s eyebrows raised. “Well that’s uh, a new one… Dean had something to burn then, at least?”

Ash took a few beats to work that through in his head. “Wait. Oh no, see, you’re still down there walking and talking and everything.”

“Seriously?”

“Yup. From what we’ve worked out from check-ins, you were pretty much functioned as a charming robot with unfiltered one-liners and only the occasional scary moment.”

“Well that’s… terrifying. I mean if all they need is a body, do they even need me down there to say yes?”

There was a pause as everyone looked anywhere but at him.

“We’re not sure about a lot yet,” Mary said eventually.

Ash scratched at the back of his head, still leaning down on the bar. “Might be when I get a few more people together we’ll get more eyes on things.”

“Yeah, how does that work, anyway?” Sam asked, frowning. “There’s not exactly any magic mirrors around – how do you guys know what’s going on down there?”

“Using willpower to get what you want is pretty much unlimited now – if you focus hard enough-”

“You can make a whole bar, or a magic mirror to earth, just with your mind powers.”

“That is a horrible way of explaining fast the thing I’ve been working hard on studying this whole time, but sure, yeah. I think you’ll be pretty good at it, seeing as you already used willpower to mentally beat up the Devil.” He grinned slowly. “You wanna try? I got something you might wanna see.”

Sam smiled. “Sure, I’ll bite. So what, just imagine something you want and…?”

“You know what? It’s kind of too complicated, I’ll just show you,” Ash said, sitting up. “Come over here.”

Obediently, Sam went over to him. “Ok…”

Ash pulled a small, closed laptop Sam hadn’t noticed along to him, and opened it up. After a few seconds of a loading screen, a video of fireworks above a city came into view, and two silhouettes, sitting so closely they might have been one, came into focus.

Sam knew what he was looking at.

“That’s… that’s me. San Francisco, 4th of July 2005… that was the night I… that I knew I wanted to marry her one day,” he finished lamely, voice cracking slightly. They’d snuck out to the roof at a friend’s party, and she’d had too much to drink, to smoke, and she’d started falling asleep on his shoulder, but still kept trying to sing along to the music drifting up from downstairs. She’d never been able to hold a note even sober, but it never bothered Sam…

“ _That_ , Sam, is actually Jessica Moore’s current Heaven,” Ash told him, spinning around in his seat to look more closely at Sam.

Sam felt his mouth fall open. He’d never assumed it meant anything to her, not like it had to him.

“The point being… I know where she is. If you think it’d be a good idea to bring her in, you just say the word, man.”

Which would be great, Sam thought, if he was able to say anything right now.

“Sam?”

Sam turned, seeing a familiar figure in a trenchcoat standing in the center of all the dead hunters.

“Cas!”

Unthinking, and strangely relieved to see someone still living, Sam rushed over and hugged the angel, who stood motionless in his arms.

“Cas, wait, isn’t you being here way too dangerous?”

“Yes.”

Sam’s eyes widened as he pulled back and felt a rush of memories. “Wait you – you were dead… I _killed_ you.”

The angel took a deep breath. “Yes.”

“Is… Heaven _Heaven_ for angels too?”

Cas shifted and Sam got the impression that he’d be checking his watch if he had one. “I suppose I can risk a little more time up here. You do deserve to know something about what’s going on…”

*

Dean huffed out a long breath and looked down at his hands holding his drink, focusing on keeping them steady.

Mechanics, that’s all this was. He’d done this a thousand times. He could make himself remember how to sit in a bar having a quiet drink with his brother because he knew how to do that.

The fact that his brother, his real brother, was dead, and in a way that felt like Dean’s fault was almost irrelevant.

Besides, even that feeling wasn’t exactly new.

“So. How bad are you regretting things now?”

Dean didn’t answer immediately, but raised his drink to his lips again.

“C’mon. Scale of 1 to 10. Hit me. I’m not exactly gonna get emotional over the answer here.”

Dean glared at his soulless brother, who was still nursing the same beer.

“Probably seven. Know it was the right choice or whatever, but. Not exactly fun to live with.”

Part of him wanted Sam to take offence at that, lash out at him so Dean had the excuse to hit back, to hit _something_ –

“What, to live with me or living without him?”

Dean shrugged. “Both, I guess. And what does alcohol even do to you anyway?”

Sam blinked and looked down at his drink. “I’m not sure. I haven’t really had much since I got back. But… I mean my body chemistry hasn’t exactly hasn’t changed, I don’t think. So I’m assuming I’m still as big a lightweight as I was before.”

“You haven’t tried getting -”

Sam cut him off with a slightly condescending smile. “Think about it. Why would someone without a soul want to poison themselves?”

Dean frowned and shifted on his stool. “To check if you could still… feel anything?”

“Nope.” Sam shook his head. “I think you’re confusing my lack of soul with depression, because that _is_ something you understand.”

“Hey -”

“But for me at least… I don’t have any feelings to drown, or, or another side of me I want to let out.” He snorted. “I guess I _am_ the other side…”

Dean took another drink. “This is getting way too heavy for me…”

“Ok, we can lighten things up.” Sam turned in his seat and leant against the bar, raising his eyebrows in a way that was so painfully _young_ Sam, leaning back on the Impala’s door and gearing up to judge Dean for all his choices.

“Ask me anything you ever wondered about him but never asked.”

“Don’t talk like that…”

“Like what?”

“Like you’re not him,” Dean said with a shudder. “It’s… creepy. ‘Sides it feels like reading his diary or some shit.”

“I thought you didn’t like us being the same.”

“I don’t like any of… this,” Dean corrected, waving his arms about lamely. “Why are you trying so hard to like, _impress_ me anyway?”

“Why did you bring us out here and act like you wanted me to if you didn’t?”

Dean glared from out the corner of his eye and looked down at his drink again. Maybe this couldn’t work. Unfailingly and sometimes annoyingly honest as the guy continued to be, the situation still felt fake and… temporary.

But…

“Alright. What did he – you, really get up to in Stanford. He always acted like he never did the whole fraternity deal, but -”

“Oh, he didn’t. But,” Sam added at Dean’s groan. “he wasn’t all squeaky clean record either.”

“Oh yeah?”

“At least one night smoking something that was, thinking back, almost definitely oregano from someone’s kitchen. Had a threesome with his first roommate and their girlfriend -”

“ _No_. You’re fucking with me.”

Sam grinned and leaned back. “Absolute truth.  After that he considered signing up for a phone sex line to help pay his bills.”

Dean goggled. “Did he?”

Sam shook his head. “Nah. Got a different second job and didn’t have the time.”

“I thought… I thought you, _he_ got a full ride.”

“College still wasn’t exactly cheap. And you know he didn’t leave with anything.”

“Yeah, I guess I never thought…” Dean clenched his jaw. He hadn’t wanted to think about it.

“He hunted sometimes, you know.”

Dean curled his hand a little tighter around his beer bottle. “No. He wouldn’t have done that. He left.”

Sam shrugged, like whether Dean accepted what he said didn’t matter to him. Because it didn’t.

“Left the life. Didn’t mean he could ignore it if he saw something going on.”

“That sounds about right,” Dean said, choking over his words slightly. Fucking damn it… Sam and keeping all those little boxes of secrets close to his chest. And now he had the chance to ask about all of them, but he still couldn’t give anything of himself back in return. They still couldn’t _talk..._

“Dean?”

Dean turned in his chair, only half-surprised to see Cas standing behind him. “Thought you had important places to be.”

“I do. Did. I…” The angel looked away, seeming almost ashamed about something. “I checked in on Sam.”

“I’m guessing you don’t mean me,” Sam said, raising his eyebrows.

“Is he ok?” Dean hated how hoarse his voice had gone, like he’d been drinking for days and not hours.

Cas hesitated. It was brief, and someone who didn’t know the angel probably wouldn’t have spotted it at all, but Dean noticed.

“Cas. What’s wrong with Sam?”

“Nothing, he’s fine,” Cas clipped out. “He found his way back to the other hunters who sheltered you last time. I spoke to him briefly and I think he’s going to be fine where he is, and I explained to him your… situation.”

Beside him, Dean heard Sam snort, but he didn’t take his eyes off Cas. “Ok, great, _but?_ ”

Oh god, he wanted there to be a ‘but’. He wanted there to be some excuse to storm Heaven somehow, rescue his brother, call off the whole selfless new way of living routine.

Cas licked at his lip slightly, a clear sign he was, for once, measuring his words. “He offered to help me.”

Dean blinked. “Alright, am I hearing this ok? My dead brother, that we finally decided to let rest in uninterrupted peace, offered _you_ help, with, I guess, your war on Heaven? That place he’s currently lodging up in?”

The angel rolled his eyes slightly, but he shifted where he stood. He was uncomfortable, ashamed even. Dean had him.

“Yes.”

“ _Cas -_ ”

“If Raphael is successful in his goals Sam may still be the first person affected, Dean,” Cas bit back, suddenly all righteous heavenly fire again. “And his plan has merit.”

“And what happens to him if it doesn’t work?”

“I won’t let them hurt him.”

“Oh yeah? Well what exactly are you going to do to stop them?”

For a moment Cas looked as though Dean had slapped him. Then his jaw hardened, eyes narrowed as he seemed to find new resolve of his own. “I did _everything_ I could to keep you out of this fight,” Cas hissed. “I wouldn’t accept your brother’s help now if I wasn’t… wasn’t desperate.”

They stared at each other a moment. Dean knew the war had been taking its toll on his friend, but now he could see the effects of that for himself it scared him. Cas was tired, and he was no longer sure he could win. Maybe he hadn’t ever been sure.

Beside them, Dean registered Sam standing up and clearing his throat. “So... What’s this plan I have?”

*

From what Mary understood, her son’s plan was sort of like creating a kind of Heavenly democracy.

“It’s sort of like just by being here, we help power Heaven,” Sam explained to them all, standing in the middle of them all and gesturing wide with his hands, like he’d been born to command a room. Maybe he had. They said he’d tried to be a lawyer once, which seemed to have worked out as well as her own attempts at motherhood and normalcy.

His height helped too, she mused as she looked up at him. It made him seem more statesmanlike, standing at least a head above the rest of them and looking comfortable with that.

Had her father been that tall? She remembered him tall, but all the memories she’d had of him here had involved her being so much smaller.

“So what, every time someone dies and makes it up here it’s like another battery in Heaven’s pack?” Jo asked, swinging her legs off the bar. Jo was the person whose presence still made Mary uncomfortable. She was Bill’s kid, born and died all with never having met her.

Sam nodded. “Basically. Angels don’t have souls of their own, but by commanding Heaven, they have access to the power we bring them. It’s like in the terms and conditions of this place – if we’re here, we’re supporting that back-up power, and any angel directly connected with Heaven is much more powerful than one who isn’t. When they cut Cas off he was basically starting to turn human.”

“So what, you want us to break out of Heaven?”

Sam took a deep breath and smiled slightly. “Not break out. But maybe… opt out? Especially when we think, and Cas agrees, that we won’t be giving as much power as someone willing and consenting would. So if a bunch of us started actively _supporting_ the anti-Heaven angels, then -”

“Then they might have a chance.”

“Yes.”

“And I take it… we’re not enough,” Ash said, nodding like he was thinking something through.

Sam shook his head. “It’s not like we’d need everyone up here on our side, but yeah, we’d need more people. And more people to… maybe sign a document? Cas was gonna get back to me on that one.”

“Well I’ve got _connections_ ,” Ash told him, still nodding.

Jo smiled down at him from her spot on the bar. “He’s been hiding his family away from us. Feels too ashamed of us to introduce them.”

Ash glared at her, but without any heat. “Sure, that. But also a bunch of famous people.”

“ _Famous people_?”

Ash shrugged. “Dunno what you idiots were doing with your time up here but I wasn’t gonna waste mine. ‘Course… not all my heroes made it up here, but…”

Sam looked visibly excited now. “Ok, great! And everyone here knows how to break into other people’s Heavens?”

“…Some of us aren’t as practiced at it,” Mary admitted. She hadn’t been ‘awake’ all that long, and the only person she’d thought about trying to find had been her mother. But even then, the idea of how that conversation might go terrified her.

“That’s no problem, we’ve got experts involved.”

A man was suddenly standing in the middle of them, in the same way the angel before had, and after a few beats Mary realized she recognized him.

Sam, of course, didn’t. “Who are you?”

The man smirked, and Mary had to curl her hand into a fist at the sight of this angel talking with her son. Again.

“Be not afraid dear dead mortals, I come with glad tidings.” As Sam’s expression didn’t change, the angel rolled his eyes. “My name is Balthazar, and I was sent up here into danger by your loyal pitbull Cas.” Sam’s shoulders relaxed slightly.

“He’s called some people who know a bit more about how this place works, and he thinks your plan _can_ work… But you’ll need to be fast. We might be able to give you some help there, we have other angels up here that could be useful. We’d be losing them as sleeper agents but that might, well, be worth it.”

“So… a written contract of consent? Could that work?”

The angel gave a look of disdain Mary desperately wanted to wipe off his face. “You think so… _human_ about things.”

“Is it more complicated than that or are you being an angel about things?” Ellen asked, sourly folding her arms.

The angel seemed to visibly struggle with his words, torn between some new sarcastic retort and being forced to admit defeat. “You need to get real and active agreement with your idea, have them actively turn against Raphael specifically.”

“Ok so… if we did that through a petition we got them to sign…?”

Balthazar gritted his teeth. “ _Technically_ that would work, yes.”

Sam smiled, triumphant but somehow not smug with it. It made Mary proud in a way she wasn’t sure she was comfortable owning. What right did she have to feel proud of this man? She might have birthed him, but she only had herself to blame for not being there to help. It was her fault he grew up with something inhuman inside him to struggle with. If he’d grown up a good man, it wasn’t anything to do with her.

“Ok,” her son said, unthinkingly putting himself in charge, on the front line. “Let’s do this.”

*

In some ways it was easier to pull off than Sam had expected. As a room they already had easily a hundred dead friends, family and acquaintances to call on, who were more likely to be convinced quickly and in turn find and convince other people. Ash, as he’d said, already had something of a network, and after only leaving them for what felt like an hour he claimed to have secured three hundred signatures.

As Ellen had said, no one at the Roadhouse had ever actually known what sort of family background Ash had come from, and no one had ever tried to press him on it.

Sam started by drawing up a list. At first he wasn’t sure he had many more people to contact who weren’t already in the room, but once he got to sitting down for a moment, he found that wasn’t exactly true. He’d seen a lot of people die on hunts over the years, and he still remembered most of their names. Some of them he was less than certain he’d find up here, but looking still felt important to him.

_Pastor Jim Murphy_

_Meg Masters – possessed_

_Victor Henrikson (spelling?)_

_Madison – can werewolves get to heaven?_

_Lily_

_Andy Gallagher_

_Ava Wilson_

_Jake Talley_

_Isaac_

_Gordon Walker_

_Ruby’s vessels?_

_Nancy… (?) The virgin_

_~~Bela Talbot~~ In Hell_

_Kate Milligan – Does it count if we never met them?_

_Adam Milligan – would Michael have sent him up here??_

_Tyson Brady – the real one_

_Jessica Moore_

He’d put Jess last on the list, since he still wasn’t sure he had the courage to speak to her. It was the opposite issue from what he knew his Mom was struggling with. She didn’t want to see John because she knew he’d changed, in the time he’d been alive without her, and not necessarily for the better.

Sam had known Jess very well. But he’d never completely let her know him out of fear she would hate him or worse, fear him. Now, after living without her and literally bringing about the end of the world while she’d been gone that fear had multiplied thousands of times.

If she was happy with memories of him, how could he spoil that with his awful reality, what was left of the kid he’d been?

“You got an idea of who you’re running to?” someone asked behind him. Sam turned to see Jo, lightly resting a hand by his shoulder as she squinted down at his list.

Sam snorted, as he self-consciously scanned his eyes over what he’d written. “Not much. Uh… turns out I didn’t have a lot of great relationships with the people I knew who’ve died. Half of these people would probably rather try to kill me than listen to me.”

Jo smiled. “Still got more than me. I think… yup. All my people are here in this room. Bar a couple of hunts here and there.”

“Maybe you got less people killed.”

She shrugged. “Maybe I had less people around, period.”

Sam smiled. “I guess. Though I think at least seven of the people on this list tried to kill me at least once.”

Jo raised her eyebrows and nodded slightly. “I mean, you win on the tragic backstory front, but still. Appreciate what you had and that.”

“I am -”

“What about her?” Jo pointed down at Jess’s name. “Why’d she get put last?”

Sam breathed in and kept his eyes on the page. “Dean told you?”

“Yup.”

“If you were her… would you want to see me? It was knowing me that got her killed, so -”

The weight of Jo’s hand on his shoulder only increased. “Sam I have no idea what you guys were to each other, but I think for me? I’d always choose to know what was going on. Even if that meant more work.”

Sam’s nails started digging into the wood of the bar table. The table remembered from a bar that had been burned to the ground, painstakingly remade from memories.

“So,” he said eventually. “You any good at knowing this whole Heaven-hopping thing?”

She grinned and offered a hand to help him stand up. “I may not have many people close to me to visit but that doesn’t mean I didn’t visit people.”

“Oh yeah?”

“Mmm. Hendrix has a really _psychedelic_ kinda Heaven. 100% does not disappoint there.”

*

Sometimes it surprised Dean how easy it had been to fall back into a familiar routine with his brother. Or, his brother, but not his brother. He’d also stopped thinking about it.

Sam was Sam for the way he thought about things, but not always in the way he’d have done things, or feel.

But it wasn’t exactly the first time Dean had been forced to restart their relationship. So by falling back on a lot of unhealthy coping mechanisms he was just about getting through it.

He’d thought about calling Lisa, thought about offering her everything and giving up the life again - for real this time. But then he’d remember that he was the last person she’d want to see turning up on her doorstep again, and… and then he’d finish up another hunt. With Sam. And it wouldn’t be like before, and he wouldn’t always feel like a hero but most of the time it was starting to feel like enough. To know he could still do this, to know he still had someone next to him even if that someone wasn’t exactly right.

And as long as he could still get away for a drink and several more by the end of the day, it felt good knowing he’d been out there trying to help.

They were in another bar, the two of them, after one more hunt, and it was the kind of place Dean had only just stopped avoiding because he knew it would remind him too much of the Roadhouse.

He hadn’t heard from Cas in _weeks._

That could mean good news. It could also mean a whole load of bad, with two of the people that still mattered most to him right up there in the line of fire.

“Hey,” Sam said, shoving at him lightly with one hand and smiling. “You’re thinking too hard again.”

Dean groaned and grabbed for his beer again. “Yup.”

“You wanna play the game?”

Dean rolled his eyes but he didn’t correct his brother. He was thinking.

“Ok. When did that kid, who used to _refuse_ to eat _any_ greens, start munching on salad for fun?”

It was one more of his definitely not healthy ways of dealing with grief, but it had started turning into a routine whenever the two of them ran out of things to talk about.

“Alright that one’s easy. First of all, he refused to eat the veg _you_ made -”

“Hey, there was nothing wrong with my cooking -”

“And second… he liked having some sense of control over his life. Keeping himself healthy was an easy place to start.”

“And you’re still on the health kick because…?”

“Can’t fault the logic. Being more healthy isn’t ever a bad thing. You should maybe -”

“Ok, gone too far now,” Dean snapped, but not fiercely. “If nothing creepy gets me I’m going down via heart disease. Don’t take that from me.”

They smiled at each other, in that still-getting-used-to-you kinda way.

“Alright,” Dean started, feeling his throat dry out. “What were his last thoughts? Y’know. When he fell?”

He risked a glance at Sam and saw that he really needed time to think this one through.

“It happened so fast,” Sam said slowly. “There was shock and horror at everything going on. There was grief in seeing you like that. There was terror at what he knew he still needed to do, fear that he wasn’t going to be brave enough… But there was also a kind of triumph in it, in knowing he’d regained control against all odds. In knowing we could win. In knowing he didn’t have to be the monster he was supposed to be, that you didn’t need to think of him like that anymore.” Sam shrugged. “I guess those were the main points.”

“I never thought he was a monster,” Dean managed, voice still feeling raw.

“Well, you _did_ tell him so - on multiple occasions. The voicemail you left when he raised Lucifer in the first place – that was always on constant replay. In his head and for a while using his voicemail.” Sam made a face. “It was pretty pathetic. Like if you thought you had the self-loathing thing covered…”

“I didn’t… I never said anything like that.”

“Well yes, you did. You said I was a monster, that I was dead to you and that you were going to have to kill me after all.” Sam smiled slightly. “I could repeat it verbatim if you like. Like I said, pathetic.”

Dean shook his head. “That’s really not what I said…”

Dean could almost hear the cogs in his brother’s brain whirring around. “Ah. Right. It must have been Zachariah that sent that – or… Ruby maybe? I guess?”

Dean kept staring as Sam went back to his beer. “Wait so you’re telling me he went to his grave thinking I said that? And he didn’t say a word?”

Sam froze, the way he often did when he started worrying he’d given the wrong answer. “Yes…?”

Dean wanted to scream, and for once Sam seemed to pick up on something of what he was feeling. “I’m… getting the impression you’d like this conversation to be over.”

Dean shrugged and had to grit his teeth. “I guess…? What, you need permission to get lost now?”

Sam’s eyes shifted focus to somewhere behind Dean’s head. “You said I should work on my social cues. But there’s a hot dude over at the other end of the bar who’s been checking me out since we got here and I -”

Dean rolled his eyes. “Fine, go ahead… wait, _dude_?” Dean turned in his chair instantly, scanning the men behind them. He wasn’t sure he’d personally class any of the guys sitting behind them as passably hot.

“Dean, again, I’m not the best with the social cues, but I’m pretty sure you’re being a terrible wingman.”

“Well I’m sorry, I’m not used to having to wingman you for another… _man._ Is this just soulless you or was this always… you know what, you’re right, I don’t need this conversation. Go… knock yourself out or knock _boot_ s or _whatever_.”

Without any more ceremony Sam stood up to leave and Dean could only shake his head as he watched him walk away to a guy that, admittedly, wasn’t bad looking. If you were into that sorta thing.

Which apparently Sam, or at least soulless Sam, was.

And he’d thought he’d known everything there was to know about his little brother.

After finishing his drink quickly and trying not to spend too much time staring over at Sam, Dean got up to leave. Sam had a key to the motel room, and Dean had a strong feeling he wasn’t planning on using it that night anyway.

By the time Dean had settled into his seat in the car, he was shocked out of it, realizing he wasn’t alone. “Fuck… you have got to stop doing that to me, man.”

“I timed it so you wouldn’t be driving this time,” Cas explained, a hint of apology in his voice.

“Yeah, well… learn to warn a guy. How’s the good fight going?”

“I’m about to finish it.”

Dean turned his head sharply. He always felt uneasy, having conversations in the car without the engine running. Things felt too quiet, not right.

“Yeah? Sammy’s plan come together?”

Cas smiled, and something about the energy behind it was worrying to look at. It reminded Dean far too much of how his brother had looked when he’d unveiled his grand pull-the-devil-down-with-me plan. A strange mix of relief for finally knowing what he was doing, and sheer suicidal terror, mixed with a bizarre kind of excitement.

“Yes, and I think it’s going to work. If we catch them by surprise.”

“You can win?”

“We have a – a chance of winning,” Cas corrected stiltedly. “There’s a lot of variables to manage but… but we definitely a have a chance - an honest chance.”

“Ok, buddy, you have definitely lost me now…”

“I got a glimpse of what I’d be prepared to do to win this war, Dean, and it’s not… it’s not what I set out to be.” His friend sounded so tired, so much more human than Sam ever did these days that it made Dean want to reach out to him somehow – to put his hand on his or – or something else that was horribly sappy.

“And I don’t think it’s someone you would have liked,” Cas added, looking down and lowering his voice as if of the two evils this was by far the greater.

Dean wished he was better at somehow knowing what to say. With anyone else he might have called off the moment as too chick-flick already – but Cas wouldn’t get what he meant by that and it would only hurt him.

“Well… I don’t see that happening any time soon. You just – promise to watch yourself, right? And… call if you need anything.”

Cas hesitated for a moment, before eventually nodding and smiling slightly. “I will. Thank you. And I meant what I said. Nothing will happen to Sam or the others.”

Dean nodded and hissed out a breath. “Ok, uh good luck out there, buddy. You know -”

He realized he was alone in the car again before he could figure out how to finish his sentence and slumped back in his seat.

“And so long to you too,” he muttered to the car.

*

There hadn’t been much time for socializing with the whir of trying to mobilize, but finally Sam had time to talk to people – to try having fun with this whole afterlife business. As far as he could tell, either Cas’s attempt against the last archangel had worked and they were safe, or the whole thing had failed and they might as well enjoy themselves.

Sam wasn’t all that sure if he’d be _able_ to enjoy this evening, or even relax enough to try, but –

“Hey,” said his Mom, reaching over the table in the Italian restaurant they’d imagined themselves into and putting a hand on his arm, “you doing ok?”

Sam breathed out slowly. “Yeah. Yeah I think so. I’m – I’m not actually sure why this is making me so nervous – Jess is the important one and she…”

His Mom tightened her grip slightly and smiled. “When I met John’s Mom it was a mess.”

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. I was late. There’d been a nest of vamps my cousin had stumbled onto across town and he needed back-up. By the time I finally made it to dinner my hair was a mess, I was limping and my jeans were stained all over with blood.”

Sam cracked a smile. “How did you explain that one?”

“Honestly, I… I can’t even remember. Whatever it was I think John bought it, but his Mom never stopped looking at me like I was some stray he’d dragged in off the street. She was a formidable woman, your grandma.”

“Maybe I’ll get to meet her sometime.”

Mary let go of his arm and leaned back. “Maybe.” She still hadn’t tried to find John, and Sam had never tried to push her on that. He hadn’t figured out what he’d say to him either yet.

He was enjoying his Grandma Deanna’s company though. She had some incredible stories, and it was heartening to see his Mom next to her, still acting a little like a girl herself when coming face to face with her own mother again.

They’d talked some, together, Sam and his Mom, about their mistakes, the things they’d been afraid to talk about – the demons they both had in their past, mostly in the literal sense.

Mostly though, it had been hard tearing himself away from Jess. He’d almost chickened out of telling her at all several times through that first conversation of hey, just an older, more grizzly version of your boyfriend here. Just wanted to let you know that you’re dead, this is Heaven, I need your help, and hey, how’d you feel about spending the rest of your afterlife with me?

The thing was, as Ash had pointed out to him once early on in their attempts, to get someone to understand where they were you had to get them to understand where they’d been. Which in this case meant forcing them into remembering their deaths. And that didn’t get any easier.

But of course Jess had still been far and away worst of all, for the selfish fact that Sam didn’t like reliving her death either, didn’t like reliving all the ways he might have saved her, so watching her face go blank, her lip tremble as she clutched at his arms, murmuring quietly, “I burned, didn’t I?”

“Yeah… yeah Jess you did.” Heaven was a strange place. The longer he held her like that, on that rooftop she’d remembered just slightly different to the way he had, the younger he could feel himself starting to look. He could feel his hair changing, his clothes changing – scars on his palms he knew should be there were disappearing. Slowly he was becoming more like something she remembered. Becoming someone he remembered as almost able to deserve her.

Now he was sitting in a restaurant they both remembered and still trying his best to be that guy for her.

“Hey, I think we’ve got company,” Mary said, leaning in closer to indicate the door Jess was walking in from, arm in arm with an older gentleman Sam had never met before.

She’d met Mary before, briefly, but Sam knew she’d wanted tonight to be a bit special, and she looked incredible.

But then he always thought she looked incredible.

“Mr Moore, sir,” Sam said, standing to his feet and holding out a hand over the table. The older man glared at the hand offered to him for a moment, before turning his gaze upwards to Sam’s face.

“He’s a bit _skinny_ , isn’t he, Jessie?”

Still holding on tight to her granddad’s arm, Jess pulled a face at Sam. “Eh, he seems just fine to me, Grandad.”

“Lovely to meet you,” Mary said, also getting up from her seat, her eyes laughing at Sam as she pulled herself up using his arm.

As she let go, Sam felt a strange sharp _tug_ on his other arm, and he barely had a moment to open his mouth and meet Jess’s eyes before basically spinning off into a cartoon wormhole. Or at least, that was what it felt like. Sam tried to keep his eyes closed. When the spinning stopped, he found that his feet weren’t solid enough to stand on anything, and he was in a room he’d never seen before but instantly recognized as a motel room.

“Sammy?”

Sam turned and there… there was his brother. Not covered in blood, not twelve years old, but wearing a new jacket and gawking at Sam like he’d just seen a –

Wait.

Sam looked down at himself. He _looked_ just about normal, but when he raised a hand to his arm it cut right through with no resistance.

He breathed out a laugh.

“Sam?”

Sam held up a hand in an awkward wave. “Hey, Dean.”

The hug Dean trapped him in wasn’t solid, but it felt real enough.

“Yeah, he seemed kinda in the middle of something, but you said get him down here now, so…”

“Balthazar, its fine, thank you.”

“Cas – is everything alright? Did it work?”

Dean moved away from the hug to look at the angel, who Sam now noticed was standing by the motel door next to Balthazar.

“You left without a word – I thought you guys were toast. Toast _again,_ ” Dean choked out, clearly torn between relief and frustration.

Cas smiled, and it was the largest one Sam had ever seen on him. “It worked perfectly. And I thought you deserved to hear that together.”

“You still the big sheriff upstairs?”

“He’s trying to get out of that one,” Balthazar answered for him. “Says he’s not sure good things happen to angels with only one of us in charge.” He shrugged. “We’re not exactly used to anything else and it’s really not the answer anyone was hoping to hear but well, we’re cobbling something together. Sounds like it’s still going to look like a mess though.”

“How can I expect angels to change if I don’t give them any room to find out what they could become?”

Balthazar rolled his eyes up to the ceiling in apparent despair. “And then he keeps coming out with things like that. Which isn’t helping the troops understand what’s going on.”

“I’ll bet,” Dean huffed, but he sounded proud. “Everything ok upstairs on your front, Sam?”

Dean very clearly needed Sam to be able to say the right thing here, and Sam could understand why. He almost still couldn’t believe that Dean had made the decision to have him sent to Heaven after fighting to get him back, and he suspected Dean still didn’t believe it either.

“Things are great,” he said eventually. “I found Mom.”

Dean’s eyes widened. “Yeah? She ok?”

Sam nodded. “Yeah. We’re getting on ok – I think. So… thanks.”

Plunging his hands furiously into his pockets and rocking back on his heels, Dean managed a strained smile. “Tell her… tell her I say hey, I guess?”

“I’ll do that.”

Both of their attentions were drawn away from each other again as the motel room door swung open and in walked… Sam. It was bizarre, but in all the memories he’d come in and out of in Heaven, he always took on the role of his younger self. He never actually had to look at him.

“Oh,” Sam watched his body say. “Visitors.”

“Could you not have just put me back in my own body for this conversation?” Sam asked, only half joking. He hadn’t asked, but he hadn’t imagined that Dean would still be walking around with this thing that wasn’t exactly him.

His body contorted its face up in obvious disgust.

Dean waved a hand dismissively. “Nah, my grieving process or whatever has been messed up enough as it is by this whole fucked up situation. Can we not try and make it worse?” Again, he was half-joking, but a half was definitely all it was.

“So is it…” Sam cut himself off and addressed his soulless counterpart. “How much are… _you_ me?”

Dean answered for him as his soulless self continued staring. “Eh, it’s still kinda you, just with less of a filter.”

“Oh god.”

“Yeah.”

“You should…” Dean gritted his teeth town. “You should know that that fucking voicemail you listened to that night when you killed Lilith… it wasn’t me, what you heard, Sam.”

“What?”

“You know…” Dean shook his head before jolting it back. “He told me.”

“Oh… Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, thanks?”

“Sam, I’m just sorry you ever thought I’d say something like that to you.”

“Can we break this up yet, or do I have permission to vomit?” Sam heard Balthazar ask his commander.

“Give them another minute,” Cas said.

“Sounds like we’re on a timer then,” Dean muttered.

“Just… you’re alright? Down here with him?”

“I think I’m gonna be.”

“You ever think about going back to Lisa?”

Dean nodded slowly. “A lot. And then I remember I actually enjoy what I do most days and that I burned that bridge. Really badly burned, but don’t, don’t worry about it.” He smiled, and though he seemed tired, it looked genuine. “But I guess now that you stopped the apocalypse again there might be more time to cut loose here and there.”

“And I won’t see you up there too early?”

Dean shrugged, and glanced back at Soulless Sam, at Cas. “No promises, but that’s not how I’m planning things anymore.”

*


End file.
